The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Currently, many wireless local area networks (WLANs) operate according to Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standards, such as the 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, or 802.11n Standard. When operating in an infrastructure mode, WLANs typically include an access point (AP) in communication with one or more stations. The stations in a WLAN typically include wireless transceivers, and may be associated with devices such as smart phones or laptops. Typically, the AP is also connected to a network, such as a corporate infrastructure network or the Internet. If an AP is connected to the Internet, the data transmitted between the AP and station may be Internet Protocol (IP) data used to support a variety of applications, from Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications to web browsing.
Power management techniques are generally used to lower the overall power consumption associated with wireless data communications, and are important for extending battery life for portable stations. As one example, IEEE 802.11 defines a power save mode in which a station in a sleep state wakes up to listen for data once every n beacon intervals, where n is an integer, and then sends a series of poll messages to receive available data frames from the AP. In addition, IEEE 802.11v has introduced a “wireless network management” sleep (WNM-sleep) mode that allows a station/device to remain in a sleep state for an even longer duration. While the currently-defined WNM-sleep mode may save additional power due to the relatively long sleep duration, the technique as currently defined may be poorly suited to certain types of traffic, such as the “bursty” traffic that often results when a user at a station browses web pages via the Internet. Further, while the current IEEE 802.11v Standard specifies that a station may use the WNM-sleep mode simultaneously with the power save mode of IEEE 802.11, no specific mechanism is provided to support interoperability between the WNM-sleep mode and the power save mode of IEEE 802.11.